The Mourner and the Paradox
by zsarah
Summary: Rose Tyler sat on the beach, surrounded by the arms of the man who made her dreams come true, mourning for the loss of her first love and best friend, the man who showed her the universe and showed her that Rose Tyler was more than a shop girl. She knew her days of universe hopping were done, and that she would never see him again. A Rose Tyler/ Metacrisis one shot.


**Hello my Lovelies, **

**It has been a long time since I have published anything, and for those of you following Requiem for War, I am currently editing a new chapter that will hopefully be posted soon. **

**This is just a little plot bunny that wouldn't leave me alone. It was originally supposed to be part of a greater story, but I think that muse has died a long slow death. But I am left with this little one shot that I am actually quite happy with. **

**Standard disclaimers apply! Read and enjoy!**

**xo zsarah.**

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All she could think was that he loved her; this impossible dream come true. The Doctor loved her in the same way she loved him. At the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing away from the forlorn Norwegian beach, she broke away from the lips that were still pressed to hers in celebration.

As she watched, the blue box that felt more like a home than anywhere she had ever been before disappeared. All she could do was sink to her knees in sorrow. She felt the man she already loved wrap his arms around her as she cried.

Rose Tyler sat on the beach, surrounded by the arms of the man who made her dreams come true, mourning for the loss of her first love and best friend, the man who showed her the universe and showed her that Rose Tyler was more than a shop girl. She knew her days of universe hopping were done, and that she would never see him again.

When she regained her equilibrium and looked into the brown eyes that were identical to the Doctor's, a sudden question rushed out of her,

"What's your name? Cause you can't run around here calling yourself the Doctor." Her bluntness surprised her, and she realized at that moment how much the years on her own had changed her. How she had grown up. She didn't depend on the approval of the man next to her, and she had shaped herself in the image that she wanted.

The man before her opened his mouth to answer, but was then those chocolate coloured eyes glazed over,

"I don't know." He seemed lost.

"I used to know, but it's not there anymore. I'm not the Doctor, but I am. But I'm not, but I am…" He was rambling forward and would have probably continued this cycle of repetition indefinitely if she hadn't silenced him with a tightening of her hand against his arm as they sat on the cold sand of the beach while her mother was a distance away talking on the phone to Pete.

The not-Doctor collected himself and moved forward,

"I'm one half of the DoctorDonna, I'm still the Doctor, but I have no claim to that name anymore, I'm still Donna, but neither of us can claim that name truly anymore." He was lost in thought, and it was at that time that she realized she probably knew him better than he knew himself.

"We're a temporal anomaly," he continued speaking of himself and Donna, "A blip, a human-timelord two way biological metacrisis."

She had a limited understanding of what he was explaining, and in an attempt to lighten his darkening mood, she took the chance to speak while he was taking an unsteady breath,

"Well, whatever name you do choose to use, I don't think John Smith is going to cut it long term." That seemed to draw him out of his melancholy.

"You're right, as much as I've always talked about the superiority of timelords, I've never been very creative when it comes to alias." His voice was soft.

They laughed together at the memories of the adventures they had shared.

All of a sudden and without warning, his warm chuckle cut of and he seemed to fold in half and clutch his head. A long keening cry came from between his lips as tears sprung from his eyes.

As quickly as it began, and before she even had a chance to panic it was over and he was sitting upright, the physical pain seemingly gone, but tears still running unchecked down his cheeks.

"She's gone… I thought it would be stable, but she's gone. My… She's gone." He collapsed again, curled against her on the ground weeping. Sudden clarity came to Rose as she wondered what could have caused this grief.

"Donna," she breathed out thinking of the woman who she barely had a chance to meet, and yet loved.

He collected himself, the tears still falling but the chance to explain something gave him something else to focus on, a distraction from the anguish he was still clearly feeling.

"There's a reason something like this never happened. The feedback to the less biologically stable element of a two way metacrisis is always at risk of a snap feedback. In this case, the mutability of Donna's human DNA, combined with the peak and stable timelord TNA snapped back and her mind broke." His voice cracked at the end of this.

"So she's…" Rose couldn't image that the spunky redhead who had just said goodbye was dead.

His scoff broke her away from the morbid thoughts of her love's almost sister dying a universe away.

"She won't be dead. He wouldn't let that happen. But her mind would have already begun to burn. From what I felt, she hid it until it was too late to do anything other than wipe her memory of anything to do with the metacrisis. And because I am identical to him, he will have to wipe himself from her mind as well, the human mind is to dependent on imagery to do anything else."

He was still crying, over the woman whom he shared everything with and Rose could no nothing but hold him and mourn silently alongside of him.

It could have been minutes or hours later, but he breathed deeply and composed himself. In that moment she could see a spark come across that reminded her so clearly of her first Doctor in all his stubborn glory.

"I want to be Donna Noble." His voice was set and she knew there was no changing his mind on this, but if she was stuck with him she was going to have to say something as well.

"You don't quite look like a Donna, or even a Donald to me." She was looking him over carefully as if she could read a name on his skin.

"You've got the rude down, but you're missing the ginger." She hoped that humour was acceptable to him in this time; it was the only way she knew to deal with all the new information she had processed.

"You could however pass for a John, maybe short for Jonathan." She was contemplating him with a strict attention to detail. And in that moment she was sure her eyes reflected his own stubbornness as a perfect mirror.

"Jonathan Donald Noble. You'll have to do some work here to get a doctor in front of that, but that shouldn't be too much trouble with the timelord brain between your ears." He seemed shocked that she had taken over naming him with such authority, but she could see that he was surprisingly pleased with what she had come up with.

"Dr. Jonathan Donald Noble." He rolled his new name around in his mouth like he was tasting it, deciding if it was a flavour he enjoyed. Suddenly his face lit up in a bright smile, the first of his new life.

"Rose Tyler, you are fantastic! I love it!" more soberly, he continued, "After both the Doctor and Donna," He looked down at where their hands were intertwined in his lap, as if not knowing how he got in the position he was in.

"So now that we have settled on a name, what do we do now? What sort of human-y things do we do in this universe?"

Rose grinned at him, "We run."


End file.
